ART
Devotional Materialisms: on Thomas Hirschhorn's Superficial Engagement...
/ Thom Donovan
03.28.06
Devotional Materialisms: on Thomas Hirschhorn’s Superficial Engagement…
(beginning in the form of a letter to Fanzine)
How with this rage can beauty hold a plea…
— Shakespeare
One must make a friend of horror.
— Chris Marker quoting Marlon Brando quoting Joseph Conrad
Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.
— Walter Benjamin
I have been thinking a lot about the problem of submitting a journalistic account or account otherwise of Thomas Hirschhorn’s recent show at Barbara Gladstone gallery in Chelsea, Superficial Engagement (hereafter SE). What I admire about Fanzine is the extent to which it presents itself conversationally, and to this extent communicates things worth knowing in fresh and accessible ways. Yet there is something that has not allowed me to be so conversational or journalistically inclined (and that has in fact made me dread my critical freedom) in the face of Hirschhorn’s recent showing. Why have I dreaded so? Is it because SE brings to a head the deepest ambivalences I have felt about the US response to 9/11 and subsequent events: ambivalences which situate the artist between the exigencies of political effectiveness and the necessities of transcendence — our recourses to devotion, to the divine? Our resources.
(beginning in the form of a letter to Fanzine)
How with this rage can beauty hold a plea…
— Shakespeare
One must make a friend of horror.
— Chris Marker quoting Marlon Brando quoting Joseph Conrad
Mythical violence is bloody power over mere life for its own sake, divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.
— Walter Benjamin
I have been thinking a lot about the problem of submitting a journalistic account or account otherwise of Thomas Hirschhorn’s recent show at Barbara Gladstone gallery in Chelsea, Superficial Engagement (hereafter SE). What I admire about Fanzine is the extent to which it presents itself conversationally, and to this extent communicates things worth knowing in fresh and accessible ways. Yet there is something that has not allowed me to be so conversational or journalistically inclined (and that has in fact made me dread my critical freedom) in the face of Hirschhorn’s recent showing. Why have I dreaded so? Is it because SE brings to a head the deepest ambivalences I have felt about the US response to 9/11 and subsequent events: ambivalences which situate the artist between the exigencies of political effectiveness and the necessities of transcendence — our recourses to devotion, to the divine? Our resources.
